Can rheumatoid arthritis be prevented? - Janssen Rheumatoid Arthritis

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Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology 27 (2013) 467–485 ... Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic, autoimmune inflammatory disease that primarily ...
Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology 27 (2013) 467–485

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Best Practice & Research Clinical Rheumatology journal homepage: www.elsevierhealth.com/berh

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Can rheumatoid arthritis be prevented? Kevin D. Deane, MD, PhD Division of Rheumatology, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO, USA

a b s t r a c t Keywords: Rheumatoid arthritis Preclinical disease Pathophysiology Prediction Prevention

The discovery of elevations of rheumatoid arthritis (RA)-related biomarkers prior to the onset of clinically apparent RA raises hopes that individuals who are at risk of future RA can be identified in a preclinical phase of disease that is defined as abnormalities of RA-related immune activity prior to the clinically apparent onset of joint disease. Additionally, there is a growing understanding of the immunologic processes that are occurring in preclinical RA, as well as a growing understanding of risk factors that may be mechanistically related to RA development. Furthermore, there are data supporting that treatment of early RA can lead to drug-free remission. Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that it may be possible to use biomarkers and other factors to accurately identify the likelihood and timing of onset of future RA, and then intervene with immunomodulatory therapies and/or risk factor modification to prevent the future onset of RA in atrisk individuals. Importantly, several clinical prevention trials for RA have already been tried, and one is underway. However, while our growing understanding of the mechanisms and natural history of RA development may be leading us to the implementation of prevention strategies for RA, there are still several challenges to be met. These include developing sufficiently accurate methods of predicting those at high risk of future RA so that clinical trials can be developed based on accurate rates of development of arthritis and subjects can be adequately informed of their risk of disease, identifying the appropriate interventions and biologic targets for optimal prevention, and addressing the psychosocial and economic aspects that are crucial to developing broadly applicable prevention measures for RA. These issues notwithstanding, prevention of RA may be within reach in the near future. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

E-mail address: [email protected]. 1521-6942/$ – see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.berh.2013.09.002

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Introduction Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic, autoimmune inflammatory disease that primarily affects the joints. While the exact prevalence rate across the entire population is unknown, available data suggest that it affects w1% of the population, making it one of the most common autoimmune rheumatic diseases [1,2]. Furthermore, it leads to >30 billion dollars in health-related costs annually in the United States alone [3]. While as discussed below there are emerging data which show that early treatment of RA can lead to increased rates of drug-free remission, [4], for the vast majority of patients with RA who are managed in routine clinical practices, once it becomes clinically apparent, it is a disease that requires prolonged if not lifelong therapy [5]. Based on these figures, means to prevent RA could lead to substantial improvements in public health. Patients with RA typically present to health care once the signs and symptoms of arthritis (joint pain, stiffness and swelling) develop; however, established and emerging data from multiple studies support that the initial immune dysregulation of RA, as measured by RA-related autoantibodies (e.g. rheumatoid factor (RF) and antibodies to citrullinated protein antigens (ACPAs)) and other inflammatory markers, occurs long prior to the first joint symptoms. While the terminology to describe the autoimmunity of RA prior to the onset of clinically apparent synovitis is still being established [6] (and how to classify clinically apparent disease is also difficult, evidenced by two classification criteria [7,8]), currently, a workable label to describe the period of detectable RA-related autoimmunity prior to the onset of the clinically apparent signs and symptoms of joint disease of RA is the ‘preclinical’ phase of RA development (Fig. 1). Importantly, abnormalities of RA-related biomarkers during preclinical RA are highly predictive of future onset of clinically apparent RA. In addition, a growing number of studies of preclinical RA are identifying mechanisms of RA development as well as risk factors that are likely truly related to disease pathogenesis. When these factors are taken as a whole, they suggest that RA may be preventable, and there is hope that we may soon be able to approach the management of RA much like the medical community approaches cardiovascular disease (CVD) today where risk factors are identified and modified to prevent the future occurrence of clinically apparent disease.

Fig. 1. Phases of development of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In this model of RA development, disease begins with genetic and environmental risks (Phase 1), followed by asymptomatic inflammation and autoimmunity (e.g. autoantibodies, cytokines and chemokines; Phase 2), with progression to symptoms that may be present in absence of inflammatory arthritis (IA) on physical examination (Phase 3), and eventual development of undifferentiated IA (Phase 4) that may progress to classifiable RA (Phase 5). Phase 6 is defined as evolution of disease (e.g. exacerbations, remissions, and response to therapy) after clinically apparent articular disease has developed. Although Phase 1 could also be included, ‘Preclinical’ RA is most readily defined as Phases 2 and 3 as they are identifiable by biomarker testing and prior to IA that is identifiable by joint examination. This developmental process is characterized by expanding autoimmunity and inflammation, detectable through assessment of circulating biomarkers. The double-headed arrows indicate that progression of RA may be halted, or reversed, perhaps through immunomodulatory pharmacologic intervention(s), especially if initiated prior to the onset of clinically apparent IA (Phase 4).

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Herein will be reviewed some of the current understanding of the natural history, risk factors and mechanisms of RA development, with discussion on these issues being focussed on potential strategies that could be employed to prevent disease as well as some challenges to be addressed in order to make the prevention of RA a reality in the near future. The ‘preclinical’ phase of RA development Multiple studies now demonstrate that there is a ‘preclinical’ phase of RA development during which there are abnormalities of autoantibodies and inflammatory markers prior to the onset of appearance of the signs and symptoms of joint disease that characterize the clinically apparent RA (Fig. 1) [9–21]. Some of these studies have been prospectively conducted; however, most have utilized biospecimens fortuitously collected prior to the onset of RA. As such, the exact timing of appearance of biomarkers prior to the onset of signs and symptoms of RA has been difficult to identify, but overall RArelated biomarkers, and especially autoantibodies, seem to appear in the circulation on average 3–5 years prior to the onset of clinically apparent RA. Initial studies of preclinical RA focussed largely on the autoantibodies RF as well as ACPAs, the most commonly tested version of which is the anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide (anti-CCP) antibody, and a range of inflammatory markers including C-reactive protein and a variety of cytokines and chemokines [10–14,16,21–26]. More recent studies have evaluated a wider range of immunologic factors in preclinical RA that include factors such as additional ACPA tests [27], autoantibodies to peptidylarginine deiminase (PAD, the human enzyme that is responsible for tissue citrullination) [28,29], alterations of glycosylation of antibodies [30], an increasing array of cytokines and chemokines as well as gene expression profiles [18–20,31], immunoglobulin isotypes and avidity [32,33], and autoantibodies to specific citrullinated peptides and proteins [34–36]. Furthermore, multiple studies have shown that the levels of autoantibodies increase in preclinical RA as the time of clinically apparent disease approaches [12,13,19,27]. In particular, the studies detailing autoantibodies to specific citrullinated peptides and proteins in preclinical RA have provided important insights into the pathophysiology of RA development. As background, while the antigen structure for the first commercially available anti-CCP is publically available [37,38], the later generation of anti-CCP assays test for autoantibodies to proprietary citrullinated antigens; therefore, it is unclear if the test is positive what specific citrullinated protein is being recognized by a particular patient. Several research groups have developed autoantibody assays for specific citrullinated peptides and proteins and applied these tests to preclinical RA. Using a beadbased array to test autoantibodies to multiple individual citrullinated proteins/peptides in preclinical RA samples from subjects from the United States military, Sokolove and colleagues demonstrated that there is epitope spreading to citrullinated targets in the preclinical RA period, and the number of autoantibodies to citrullinated proteins increased in preclinical RA as the time to diagnosis approached [34]. Interestingly, they also identified that the expansion of autoantibodies to citrullinated targets appeared to stop after the diagnosis of RA, suggesting that once clinically apparent RA developed, epitope spreading halted although the reasons for this finding, such as medication effect or other factors, are not known. Brink and colleagues used a Swedish cohort to also evaluate the individual ACPAs in preclinical RA samples, and demonstrated that an increased number of positive ACPAs had a higher specificity for future RA [39]. Similar to what was seen in the Sokolove study, Brink and colleagues also found that systemic autoimmunity in RA was initially restricted to a small number of ACPAs that expanded as time to RA diagnosis approached. Of interest, in the Brink study, the ACPAs detected earliest in the preclinical period were found to often disappear over time suggesting that early in the development of RA autoimmunity may be initiated by a break in tolerance to certain citrullinated proteins, and over time the development of autoantibodies to other citrullinated proteins may be important in the propagation of autoimmunity and transition to clinically apparent disease. Of note, the prolonged period of preclinical autoimmunity in RA has raised the hypothesis that RA does not start in the joint but rather at some extra-articular site, with this hypothesis supported by several joint examination and imaging studies, as well as a synovial biopsy study, that have found that the majority of subjects with circulating RA-related autoantibodies do not have clear evidence of synovitis [40–44]. The finding of immunoglobulin A (IgA)-related autoantibodies in preclinical RA [12,19],

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associations between preclinical RA autoantibody positivity and lung disease [41,45,46] as well as associations between RA and organisms that cause periodontal disease, gut disease or genitourinary disease [47–51] suggest that the site of initiation of RA may be a mucosal surface. Investigations into these aspects of RA development are rapidly expanding but, as will be discussed below, they raise an important issue regarding RA prevention: should extra-articular sites be targets for preventive interventions? (Table 1) Risk factors for RA development Preventive strategies that target risk factor modification would ideally be based on a sound understanding of the modifiable exposures that influence the development of RA. There are numerous factors that have been associated with increased risk for RA. Some of these risk factors are presented in Table 2. Several of the strongest risk factors are certain genetic factors including the presence of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles containing the ‘shared epitope’, female sex, family history of RA and exposure to cigarette smoke [52–56]. In particular, smoking is the strongest known environmental risk factor, especially for ACPA-positive RA, and is thought to explain up to 35% of ACPA-positive RA [57]. There is also emerging understanding of other factors that may influence RA risk including the protective effect of factors such as alcohol use and intake of certain fatty acids [58,59]. Furthermore, as mentioned above, there is growing evidence suggesting that certain infections and/or inflammatory processes such as periodontal disease and infections with Porphyromonas gingivalis may be triggers for RA [47] (Table 3. However, a caveat to these risk factors and their association with RA is that most of these associations were identified in subjects who had established RA, and there may be many biases associated with such findings including recall bias, or effects of immunomodulatory therapy on a variety of biomarkers of risk (e.g. associations of infections may be influenced by immunosuppression). It is also not clear in the majority of studies if the risk factors for RA that have been identified are related to the initiation of RA, which likely occurred years prior to the clinically apparent onset of their disease. Table 1 Examples of studies of autoantibodies and other biomarkers in preclinical ARDs. Examples of studies of autoantibodies and other biomarkers in preclinical ARDs. Study

Biomarkers

Findings

Rantapaa-Dahlqvist et al., 2003 [12] Nielen et al., 2004 [13]

RF, CCP

Deane et al., 2010 [106]

RF, CCP, multiple cytokines, chemokines & CRP

Bos et al., 2010 [68]

RF and CCP

Karlson et al., 2013 [72]

Multiple genetic and environmental factors

van de Stadt et al. [69]

Multiple environmental factors, symptoms and biomarkers

PPV 100% for a diagnosis of RA within 1.5 years if RF-IgA and CCP positive (based on case-control data); PPV up to 100% for RA diagnosis within 5 years based on 5-year incidence rates of 0.001 (general population) or 3.9% (estimated from high-risk multicase RA families) ACPA and/or 2 or more RF isotypes >96% specific for future RA; highest levels of autoantibodies